Textbook Censorship

Textbook Censorship

The Texas State Board of Education decides what every student in Texas public schools will learn from kindergarten through high school. The board does so by adopting curriculum standards and textbooks for public schools in the state.

For decades, politicians on the State Board of Education and their activist allies have taken advantage of this flawed system to dismiss the advice of experts and scholars. They have instead worked tod inject their personal views into textbooks on everything from evolution and climate change to the history of slavery, civil rights and separation of church and state.

There is, sadly, a considerable list of divisive figures who have served on the State Board of Education. But even within that context, it's hard to name one who has been more divisive than David Bradley, R-BeaumontBuna. On Monday Bradley announced he would not seek re-election next year and will retire from the SBOE District 7 seat he's held since he was first elected in 1996. Read More

TFN PRESIDENT: STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION MEMBERS WILL USE THIS BILL TO RETURN TEXAS TO THE WORST YEARS OF THE TEXTBOOK WARS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 28, 2017

AUSTIN – Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller is warning that today’s passage of SB801 by the House and Senate threatens to return Texas to the worst years of textbook censorship by the State Board of Education.

SB801 allows the state board to determine whether content in textbooks under consideration for use in Texas public schools is “suitable for the subject and grade level.” Current state board member and former chair Barbara Cargill, R–The Woodlands, has already made clear she and her colleagues will use that provision to reject textbook content they don’t like.

Prior to 1995, state board members sometimes demanded hundreds of changes to textbook content they didn’t like, often for personal or political reasons rather than factual accuracy. If publishers didn’t make the changes, the state board could reject their textbooks for use in Texas public schools. But in 1995 the Legislature finally reined in this authority, requiring that the board approve any textbook that conforms to the state’s curriculum standards and is free… Read More

The Texas Senate voted today to approve HB1291, which the Senate Education Committee revised to allow the State Board of Education by bypass legislative safeguards against textbook censorship. The House must now either approve the revised bill or send it to a conference committee.

The Senate version of HB1291 would allow SBOE members to reject textbook content they deem as not “suitable for the subject and grade level for which the instructional material was submitted.” That highly subjective standard would effectively sweep away strict limits the 1995 Legislature placed on the ability of the SBOE to edit textbook content.

Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller has the following statement:

“One word can change a lot, and indulging the misguided desire of politicians to decide which facts in public school textbooks are ‘suitable’ and which are not would be a disaster. This bill would effectively sweep away key safeguards against textbook censorship that the Legislature wisely put in place more than 20 years ago. So the facts Texas kids learn in their classrooms would be determined by whatever political majority controls the state board, not by teachers and scholars… Read More

The anti-Muslim organization ACT! for America has fired the head of its San Antonio chapter apparently for -- get this -- being too extreme. And the guy who got canned, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Roy White, is very familiar to us as TFN. Read More

Rep conducted an informal poll of all 254 clerks in Texas. 49 responded, and 47 had NOT removed their names.
That big bill “protecting” religious liberty of county clerks was addressing a problem that doesn’t exist. #txlege

This committee has moved on to religious freedom issues. Interesting report from witness representing county clerks. The issue is marriage licenses issued to same-sex couples, and a bill allowing clerks to remove their names from licenses. #txlege

Creationism is not science.
Creationism is not science.
Creationism is not science.
Creationism is not science.
Creationism is not science.
Creationism is not science.
bit.ly/2EPwDgfpic.twitter.com/DYHB…

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